City of Stairs

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.

American Elsewhere

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....

The Company Man

A trolley car pulls into the station. Four minutes before, the inhabitants were seen boarding at the previous station. All are dead. And all of them are union. The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that cross the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, the city of Evesden. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must find the truth behind the city before it kills him.

The Emperor's Blades: Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, Book 1

In The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley, the emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods.

Mr. Shivers

Robert Jackson Bennett makes a stunning debut with this deliciously dark tale sure to hold readers in its menacing thrall. The grinding poverty brought on by the Great Depression is nowhere more apparent than in the untold thousands looking for work along America’s railroad system. But one man haunting the rail camps has been moved by an entirely different brand of desperation: revenge.

Red Sister: First Book of the Ancestor

From the international best-selling author of the Broken Empire Trilogy comes the first in a brilliant new breakout fantasy series. A searing novel set in a brand-new world, this series follows a young girl who enters a convent where girls are selected to train in religion, combat, or magic. Nona is selected to learn combat and finds herself at the center of an epic battle for empire on the outer reaches of a dying universe.

All the Birds in the Sky

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families. But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them.

Midnight Riot: Peter Grant, Book 1

Probationary constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London's Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he'll face is a paper cut. But Peter's prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter's ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale....

Sins of Empire

The young nation of Fatrasta is a turbulent place - a frontier destination for criminals, fortune hunters, brave settlers, and sorcerers seeking relics of the past. Only the iron will of the lady chancellor and her secret police holds the capital city of Landfall together against the unrest of an oppressed population and the machinations of powerful empires.

The Elementals

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama's Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait.

Snapshot

From New York Times number-one best-selling author Brandon Sanderson comes a detective thriller in a police beat like no other. Anthony Davis and his partner, Chaz, are the only real people in a city of 20 million, sent there by court order to find out what happened in the real world 10 days ago so that hidden evidence can be brought to light and located in the real city today. Within the re-created Snapshot of May 1, Davis and Chaz are the ultimate authorities.

Night Film: A Novel

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive, cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova - a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.

The Way into Chaos: The Great Way, Book 1

The city of Peradain is the heart of an empire built with steel, spears, and a monopoly on magic...until in a single day it falls, overthrown by a swarm of supernatural creatures of incredible power and ferocity. Neither soldier nor spell caster can stand against them. The empire's armies are crushed, its people scattered, its king and queen killed. Freed for the first time in generations, city-states scramble to seize neighboring territories and capture imperial spell casters.

A Darker Shade of Magic: A Darker Shade of Magic, Book 1

Kell is one of the last Travelers - magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes. As such, he can choose where he lands. There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, ruled by a mad King George. Then there's Red London, where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire. There's White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne.

Library at Mount Char

Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course - before the time she calls "adoption day", when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.

Lovecraft Country: A Novel

Critically acclaimed cult novelist Matt Ruff makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.

Hell House

For over 20 years, Belasco House has stood empty. Regarded as the Mt. Everest of haunted houses, its shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror and depravity. All previous attempts to probe its mysteries have ended in murder, suicide, or insanity.

But now, a new investigation has been launched, bringing four strangers to Belasco House in search of the ultimate secrets of life and death. A wealthy publisher, brooding over his impending death, has paid a physicist and two mediums to establish the facts of life after death once and for all. For one night, they will investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townsfolk refer to it as the Hell House.

The Fireman: A Novel

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

City of Golden Shadow: Otherland, Book 1

Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource - its children.

The Grace of Kings: The Dandelion Dynasty

Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods.

Heart-Shaped Box

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It's the real thing.

The Bone Clocks

Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel, Book 1

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them. Meet Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan to pursue her dream career in professional ballroom dance. That is, until talking mice, telepathic mathematicians, and a tangle with the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George, get in her way.

Publisher's Summary

Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus' troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.

Reading the description of this book I could not help but think of The Night Circus, a book I enjoyed very much. The Troupe promises the inner world of Vaudeville, all the odd and the strange, and peppered with mysteries of the other worldly.

What I found surprising is that with (what sounds like) such a good premise for a novel, it is instead only the thin outer crust surrounding the novel, and instead 90% of the prose is mind-numbing dialogue between the characters, who are all one dimensional, grumpy selfish empty shells themselves. If you took a shot for every time a character said "'Why?" after another character spoke you would be under the table by page 20. My biggest gripe is that not much happens in the novel. There is supposedly some big bad supernatural creatures that the troupe is both running from and opposing, but they only show up a few times in the book, and the rest of the time is just the characters in the troupe talking to each other. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue..... I'm sorry but the "he said" she said" drove me crazy, and then our very ignorant rather daft protagonist responding to almost literally everything with "why?". Imagine watching the show Lost if instead of watching the action all you got to see were Jack and Kate and Charlie and the rest of the cast sitting around on the beach just talking to each other about everything. Oh, and if they were all kind of selfish, short-tempered and stupid.

Sadly after my gripes about the content of the book I must say that none of the characters is very likable either. They are hot tempered and reactive and seem to have no substance. George our main character who is supposed to be a 16 year old pianist in search of his father is incredibly selfish and truly stupid. Yes teenagers can be selfish which is fine, but the author does not seem to have any insight into a 16 year old at all. Rather instead George's inner monologue and responses to those around him seem to be more at the level of a 6-8 year old. He seems to have no comprehension of anything around him and dumbly responds to everything with "why?". All I could picture is a toddler in a grocery store pointing at everything asking "what's that?".... "but why?

I think my greatest disappointment in this book is that the premise could have been interesting if done differently. If instead of basically ignoring what is touted as the plot of this novel, it could have actually flushed out the supposed impending danger and had well rounded characters, this could have been interesting. Instead I got stuck just listening to one-dimensional people talk to each other, yack yack yack yack......

Robert Jackson Bennett's the Troupe is my favorite new audiobook of the year. It called to mind Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, along with Ray Bradbury, and a dash of Stephen King.

Bennett recreates Vaudeville, and imbues it with a sense of magic that feels both historical and fantastical. Here’s some more about the plot: George, a teenage pianist, has been on the Vaudeville circuit for six months searching for his father’s troupe. All he wants is his father’s acceptance, but when he tracks down the players and begins to unravel the secrets Silenus and his companions carry, he’s plunged into a world of danger and magic beyond his wildest dreams. Because Silenus’s shows seem to have an effect on the very world itself, and there are other entities who’d like to bring down the curtain on it once and for all.

All the different members of the troupe are fully fleshed out, and all deliciously complicated. We meet Franny, the strongwoman; Collette, the beautiful singer and dancer; Kingsley, a bizarre puppeteer; and Stanley – Silenus’s mute right hand-man. Finally, there’s Silenus himself – a master showman who claims he’s been alive for centuries. They all have secrets of their own, as well as ambitions, and it’s a delight to spend time with them on the road, and to be surprised by their startling revelations. Knowing what I know now, I can’t wait to go back to it and watch their secrets and twists unfold all over again.

Luis Moreno does a magnificent job of bringing Bennett’s characters to life. I hadn’t heard him read before, and he delivers a subtle reading that manages to give Silenus’s voice a sense of charismatic showmanship, while making George’s a naive, sometimes arrogant teenager, and hits the right notes for all the characters in between. There were a few times in the production where odd pauses fell unexpectedly into the story, which was a little jarring – I’d occasionally look at my iPod to see if it had stopped playing. But all in all, Moreno’s reading is a real treat, and only adds more charm to this already fantastic and riveting story.

The Troupe is a must-listen, a book that will charm, thrill, and give you chills and once it wraps up, you’ll want to do the whole thing all over again.

I don' understand the positive reviews. I am an avid fantasy/fiction reader and listener (I know have 300+ audible books in my library). Reading the reviews I thought I would get something different, refreshing and "period" (vaudeville).

I simply could never get engaged in the story. I found Mr Moreno boring and flat) and the characters, flat and crude. THere was no warmth, no human interest- simply characters being pushed around in service of a pretty unique fantasy construct. But the construct was not enough to build a novel around. I must admit I made it 50% of the way through the thing and finally said "why I am torturing myself?" this is just plain boring.

I love Black Company, LOTR, first three books in G RR Martin's series (the last two suxed), Sherlock Holmes, Murder Mysteries ("I Would Know You Anywhere" being a favorite, WOT (excepting books 8-9), anything Brandon Sanderson writes (to date). So this is not a case of being stuck on one type of fantasy or genre.

This story has a distinctly "Big Fish" feel to it. Shuffling, kindly, eccentrics with a bygone-era vibe. A cynical curmudgeon hurting people, despite his good heart. Love at first sight with an unobtainable woman. A circus/vaudeville troupe to give everything a flair of magic, art, and color. Like Big Fish, I wanted to like it, but it drove. me. crazy. (So, if you love Big Fish, ignore the rest of my review and buy this book! You are not me and that is fine.)

First.

The characters are TOO annoying. George is a teenager who is blind, self-centered, and vain. Normal teenagers have good days and bad days, so we can love them despite their craziness, but George finds a way to be nails-on-chalkboard awkward all the time, whether he's yelling at someone or romancing them. The other characters notice this, but (strangely) love and pamper him anyway. You will not have this impulse.

It's not just George, either. Have you ever had an argument where the other person makes their point, and you say you're sorry, but then they continue to explain why they're mad over and over until they run out of anger? All the characters are like this, their fury-monologues meticulously transcribed. And they have plenty of opportunities for screaming fits because they spend all their time hanging out with other psychologically miscalibrated individuals.

Really, I can't say that Bennett's character development is bad. I've met people just like his characters. They're just the type of people whose drama and psychosis I try to avoid.

Second.

The story is TOO saccarine. Seriously, there is a point at the end, where a character is observed by all his neighbors looking heartbreaking in a manner they can't put their finger on. It's ham-fisted tragedy at its finest. Just when you think the author has painted himself up the most obvious tragic scenario possible, interlaced with 5 other tragic scenarios, he painstakingly explains to you "see, this is what I've done here...." Even when he writes himself a happy ending, he makes sure you know everyone is beautifully screwed. And it's soooo bittersweet you immediately need to go to the dentist.

Third.

This is a fairytale without claws. It is not a horror any more than a Disney movie is a horror. It has a "villain" - a very heartwarming villain who is the most likable character. It might be scary to children whose imaginations can provide the kind of terror the author does not. As an adult, your imagination will be too busy figuring out how to kill off all the characters except the two you like. Just like when you're watching "Walking Dead!"

I don't know why people keep getting confused that fairytales can be written by providing a lot of detailed surreal atmosphere and maybe some fairies. A fairytale is dark and unnerving and teaches you about survival. I don't know what this book teaches you. I guess not to date that girl/guy who's been through some stuff and seems a little broken. And that she might be trying to save the world.

I've loved Bennett since picking up American Elsewhere on a whim, and this book just solidified him as one of the best horror authors of my generation. Beautifully written with fantastic characters and a sprawling, mysterious adventure with just a touch of the Lovecraftian. Something Wicked This Way Comes for an older generation.

The story, the characters, the world were all so interesting and different. I have absolutely zero interest in Vaudeville or theater, but that's really just the framework that this magnificent fabric of story is hung upon - in short, don't let that part turn you off. <br/><br/>I'm a big fan of thicker fantasy & fiction writing, but this book (which is relatively short compared to my usual far) really worked like a charm to break up a "reading rut" that I'd run into where I just wasn't finding anything interesting to dig into. <br/><br/>

Any additional comments?

I didn't love the ending... but I also can't really imagine a better way to close up the book. In short, I guess I was just sad to see the story come to a close when I could have read another 400 pages (or hours?) of material based in this world.